We have politicians in Washington DC, as well as all over the country, fighting with each other, and with ordinary citizens, concerning health care.

In this corner of the world we concentrate on one small sliver of healthcare – that is healthcare information technology.

Surprisingly, what we do in this small corner of the world is amazingly highly connected to what is going to happen with the other 2 trillion dollars per year.

It certainly sees as if implementing electronic health record technology could save a ton of money. The studies show tens of billions of dollars in savings. In my humble opinion, that is just the tip of the iceburg. Continue reading: When will we know?

For many years, presidents and presidential candidates have touted the benefits of HIT. Health Information Technology, they’ve stated, can save lives, save money, improve medical care, allow physicians to make more money (???) as well as many other benefits.

Most recently, however, there seems to be an issue regarding whether or not HIT will save jobs or create jobs.

For instance, two recent articles, apparently quoting president-elect Obama appear to have contradictory information. From:http://abcnews.go.com/Health/President44/story?id=6606536&page=1 we see: “To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that, within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized,” and “But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs; it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health-care system…”

My interpretation of that latter sentence is that it will ‘save thousands of jobs.’ From my perspective, that is not job creation.

“Doctors cannot spend hours and hours learning a new system,” said Castillo. “It needs to be a ubiquitous, ‘anytime, anywhere’ solution that has easily accessible data in a simple-to-use Web-based application.”

But highly skilled health information technology professionals are as rare as they come, and many IT workers will need to be trained as health technology experts.

Early government estimates showed about 212,000 jobs could be created from this program, but Brailer said there simply aren’t that many Americans who are qualified.”

Finally, we have: “In addition to connecting our libraries and schools to the Internet, we must also ensure that our hospitals are connected to each other through the Internet. That is why the economic recovery plan I’m proposing will help modernize our health care system – and that won’t just save jobs, it will save lives. We will make sure that every doctor’s office and hospital in this country is using cutting edge technology and electronic medical records so that we can cut red tape, prevent medical mistakes, and help save billions of dollars each year.” as quoted in http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/16258.html

So, we find that Health Information Technology, if implemented nationwide will both save jobs and create jobs. Note that in this context ‘saving jobs’ means that employed people will no longer be employed, thus saving money…